A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. II
John Stuart Mill · en
§ 4. Of the three essential parts of a philosophical language, we have
now mentioned two: a terminology suited for describing with precision
the individual facts observed; and a name for every common property of
any importance or interest, which we detect by comparing those facts:
including (as the concretes corresponding to those abstract terms) names
for the classes which we artificially construct in virtue of those
properties, or as many of them, at least, as we have frequent occasion
to predicate anything of.
But there is a sort of classes, for the recognition of which no such
elaborate process is necessary; because each of them is marked out from
all others not by some one property, the detection of which may depend
on a difficult act of abstraction, but by its properties generally. I
mean, the Kinds of things, in the sense which, in this treatise, has
been specially attached to that term. By a Kind, it will be remembered,
we mean one of those classes which are distinguished from all others not
by one or a few definite properties, but by an unknown multitude of
them: the combination of properties on which the class is grounded,
being a mere index to an indefinite number of other distinctive
attributes. The class horse is a Kind, because the things which agree in
possessing the characters by which we recognise a horse, agree in a
great number of other properties, as we know, and, it cannot be doubted,
in many more than we know. Animal, again, is a Kind, because no
definition that could be given of the name animal could either exhaust
the properties common to all animals, or supply premises from which the
remainder of those properties could be inferred. But a combination of
properties which does not give evidence of the existence of any other
independent peculiarities, does not constitute a Kind. White horse,
therefore, is not a Kind; because horses which agree in whiteness, do
not agree in anything else, except the qualities common to all horses,
and whatever may be the causes or effects of that particular colour.
On the principle that there should be a name for everything which we
have frequent occasion to make assertions about, there ought evidently
to be a name for every Kind; for as it is the very meaning of a Kind
that the individuals composing it have an indefinite multitude of
properties in common, it follows that, if not with our present
knowledge, yet with that which we may hereafter acquire, the Kind is a
subject to which there will have to be applied many predicates. The
third component element of a philosophical language, therefore, is that
there shall be a name for every Kind. In other words, there must not
only be a terminology, but also a nomenclature.